I was sitting for a long examination, national board certification, expensive, just last Thursday, 11/9. I'm not currently a student (not formally, a student of life of course!) and I work full time. So I took 5 days off work to finish up studying for this thing. I did practice tests and had gotten 81 to 87% on the last 5 I did. You have to have 70% to pass this standardized exam.
My intention is listed on the other sticky thread: pass this exam already (!)
Did the first 124 or so questions with the increasing thought that these looked like they were coming from another planet, not any of the literature, texts or review books I'd been going through
Next, I found thoughts creeping up behind the scenes about what I would decide to do if I actually failed this beast--retake it next year, forget about it... etc..... I don't have to have this for what I am doing, it's an examination I'm qualified to take and it might come in handy in the near or later future, especially if I decide to make a change in my day job.
In any case, not good to have such thoughts between multiple choice questions !!
It's a timed test, but I stopped. I looked away from the test and at my scratch pad. I took some nice breaths and wrote down my intention:
In an easy and relaxed manner,
In a healthy and positive way,
For the highest good of all,
In its own perfect time (that's gotta be NOW!!) and with its own perfect timing (OK, I'll leave the timing to the universe)
In good faith and in good humor,
I intend: A PASSING SCORE ON THIS EXAM
..Well, I went back to the exam and the next several and then the next several more questions looked very familiar, no question abt the answers, then a few with some question but NO MORE FROM OUTER SPACE !!
I finished the first half of the day-long exam (lunch break between sections) and looked over the first 124. I actually changed maybe 3 of them, but the rest looked pretty reasonable, so I left them alone.
I was clearly amazed at the effect that stopping to write down my intention had on my experience with that exam. It was tangible, clear and obvious. Really made me think about all this in a slightly different way. (I'm generally much more focused on long term goals than immediate results, doing this--in fact can't ever remember trying to achieve an immediate result, but there it was
)
I'm a real experienced test taker, have been through (and passed
) tons of tests before, I guess I couldn't argue with the notion that for some reason I was "nervous" and writing down my intention "calmed me down". Looks like that, doesn't it? But that doesn't really fit too well so I'm thinking there's probably more to it.
PS We'll see how I actually did on this thing in about 8 weeks, but that experience alone was pretty impressive to me.